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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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I am going to do my best to write a post to follow up on last week's mRNA vaccine hypothetical. Last week, the idea of 25% of the population "dying" from the vaccine would have social consequences, and people discussed. I noticed a lot of in-the-weeds back and forth on the vaccines, and luckily, a paper came out today to establish a non-hypothetical.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22014931

I am having a lot of trouble with this. The pfizer vaccine is associated with an increase in Pulmonary Embolism, which is a blood clot in the lungs. There is severe disinterest in classifying these types of blood clots. I noticed that the scientific establishment went very far to profile "microclots" of the COVID-19 disease, but noticed that clotting incidences during Flu were never really elucidated or investigated. Science is a man made, bumbling golem. Blood clots in the lungs, according to my traditional reading of Physiology, would generally mean you can have blood clotting disorder anywhere you have blood. The Heart, The Brain, and the Lungs just have the worst, smallest pipes for these clots to be detected in.

A note about Covid being a clotty disease - covid blood clots are "amyloids" that cause "long covid" - then what are blood clots that appear during a flu sequalae? These probably have never been investigated or characterized. Covid is more clotty than flu - but are we considering that Covid causes severe sleepiness and lethargy? Do activity levels while infected affect blood clotting patterns during respiratory illness? (admittedly speculation - but have you ever taken a 16 hour plane flight? Look at this article about flu vaccines preventing blood clots, from 2008. They probably do - because all respiratory viruses increase chance of clotting? Well, that's fine, but I bet vaccines aren't supposed to cause clotting.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081109193332.htm

That's all I found. Can you help me with information on clotting from the Flu?

There has been some debate about the "naturalistic fallacy" in arguing that a Covid-19 infection can be characterized as less risky than receiving a Covid-19 vaccination. I keep encountering ostensibly "pro-vax" individuals who are claiming that getting myocarditis from the vaccine is a no brainer, if you are protected against myocarditis from Coronavirus. However, we have no clear mechanisms here, except we saw autopsy results in Germany that prove there can be sudden death after vaccination from the myocarditis related arryhthmia/dysrhythmia. This type of myocarditis is not proving to be common at all with Covid-19 reinfections - I understand that for your first encounter with the virus, your odds profile is completely different. If you already had Covid-19, you have natural immunity. Any further mRNA vaccination is offering a risk without a benefit, now that your immune naivety is broken. If we had more traditional vaccines, perhaps an increased rate of myocarditis or blood clots near the lungs will be decreased, for a similar benefit. Why can't this be broached? Covaxin exists but was rejected by the FDA. The public health monolith seemed to block the chance to be "anti-vax" and win by scoring protection from the virus without being subject to a genetic-based biotechnology

We keep getting dragged down by considering every SARS-2 infection as potentially lethal, when this was really never true. I believe this has created a pervasive "magical model" of viruses where the virus touches one of your cells, and suddenly has a key to every organ in your body (please rebut me). This becomes true when infection reaches a tipping point and moves further than your lungs, but Omicron, combined with the fact that so many people have Natural and Artificial (oh sorry 2019 term - vaccine induced) Immunity, the virus is being kept very mild, and I am highly suspicious of anyone who presents a sequalae based on unique characteristics of SARS-2, when it infects your upper respiratory tract, like the hundreds and thousands of respiratory virus strains that were ostensibly new, and passed through us dozens of times. The true nature of the human ecology and it's interaction with reparatory viruses, since the group Mammalia existed, suddenly seems like a especially dangerous aberration in our times (edit note - typo and word change for group).

It seems "pro-vax" are using some type of time fallacy that hasn't updated. What human is encountering SARS-2 with a naïve immune system in 2023? Why would you take a vaccine that can be compared to the risk getting your first exposure to a new group of coronaviruses in 2023? Then arguments can hit "we didn't know at the time," but this is extremely unsatisfying to people who had these exact suspicions during the vaccine drive, and got sick very early during the "it's just a flu" media push of Feb. 2020 (I was of course, masking in Feb. 2020, sigh).

Am I outing myself as a desperate Mottian by being so befuddled by the seeming lack of interest in a new type of vaccine that can cause heart damage at comparable rates to a novel coronavirus infection. Imagine updated IFRs if you include the recirculating infections going around now.

Please come debate. I noticed more "pro-vax" on this board than usual - I'm ready for you. Let's be clear.

mRNA seems to be the problem. Check the wikipedia article for "solid lipid nanoparticle." Kind of short. A few years of science (okay, I know the line was "decades," which is not impressive compared to centuries of other vaccines). mRNA spreads throughout your body via your blood stream, and this is a technology flaw in the mRNA platform.

J&J, while still newer, did not show any concerning safety signals, and was eventually pulled because it cannot be updated efficiently, and humans become tolerant to the vectors. Or, J&J caused blood clots, killed people, and was pulled/discouraged to direct people to 'safer' mRNA vaccines. I would get more viral vectors, but probably only if I was going somewhere exotic and expected an encounter with a pathogen of special interest to me. J&J platform was also a human virus and will be treated by your immune system as a virus. You, and your mammalian ancestors have naturalistically encountered viruses since the beginning. This is not a fallacy!

Novavax - this one does not rely on stable lipid nanoparticles, but involves a novel nanoparticle that helps arrange spike protein to look more like a "virus." This is important.

Covaxin - the FDA rejected this vaccine because the one's we had were so safe. This was the exact moment I sunk permenantly into my rabbit hole. The FDA and other public health stakeholders created some type of technology embargo against a traditional Covid vaccination methods. The reasons could be many, and I think are becoming deeply cultural, and I'm excited for the conversation we're about to have. Based on centuries old concepts of presenting antigens 'as they are' (insert latin term) rather than conjuring them at the ribosome in the cell, which has been of interest for less than a median human lifetime in the USA.

So in essence, rather than ask you what you think a 54% increase in Pulmonary Embolism incidence after Pfizer vaccination, I am broaching a large anti-mRNA topic, and throwing down. I have placed plenty claims that I expect to be rebutted. If I have seemed at all to sneer or to be uncharitable, I apologize, and would be happy to reword. I wanted to put forward a spirited defense of "anti-mRNA vaxxery", not denigrate anyone on the other side.

What is the source for the claim that there is no increased risk of myocarditis in COVID-19 reinfections? It seems like your whole argument hinges on it but you don't provide any evidence for it.

I can't lead you further to water than this. I have evidence that there is a virus recirculating, not circulating for the first time. The same way vaccine reduces myocarditis, so will infection with natural immunity. Except the vaccine also causes myocarditis: thus our impasse.

I am happy to believe that natural immunity reduces rates of myocarditis induced by reinfection. The problem is your claim relies not merely on this fact, but also on it being of a particular magnitude. Specifically that the risk of myocarditis from reinfection is lower than the risk of myocarditis from getting the vaccine. What is the evidence for this relative magnitude in reduction?

Yes, the evidence is the nature of how effective natural immunity is compared to the vaccine induced immunity, which wanes. You will receive the protection of the vaccine, and more, if you get natural immunity, therefore your next encounter will have a reduced magnitude compared than if you had just the vaccine alone.

I feel like you're fishing for exact, quantitative data - I need you to be patient as data about our current times is collected. I'll have evidence to back up thr natural immunity claim in the future, just like we saw develop in 2020-2022. This is a developing emergency, that the vaccine has had some malfunction / additional risks of heart problems that are only being discovered recently. I wish I had the long term data of our developing vaccine emergency NOW, but that's simply not an option. I'm happy you agree with my overall hypothesis though.